


Illegal Activity

by Aussie_Muggle



Series: Ladies of POI: Joss Carter [4]
Category: Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: F/M, Ladies of POI Art/Fic Challenge, prompt: blur
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-19
Updated: 2015-07-19
Packaged: 2018-04-10 01:54:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,363
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4372631
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aussie_Muggle/pseuds/Aussie_Muggle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The lines between right and wrong get blurred along the way.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Illegal Activity

“Hold it!”

The Man in the Suit and his accomplice slowly turn to face her. “Burdett” is more angry with her than anything else. Carter has placed her name on the long list of people who have hurt and betrayed John Reese, and apparently that is something unforgivable in his eyes. Reese isn't angry or even surprised. He looks resigned. Like he did in that interrogation room all those months ago.

Somehow it's a thousand times worse.

Carter lets out the breath she has been holding and holsters her gun.

“Get him out of here.”

 

*

 

Szymanski’s blood is all over her hands and she can barely stop the bleeding. John is trying to explain himself but Carter can barely hear him. This is her fault. She indulged a pair of vigilantes and now Szymanski is fighting for his life.

She doesn't know what to do. She cuts contact. She runs. ( _Coward_ , says an unpleasant voice in her mind.)

 

*

 

A professional murderer cuts through half a dozen of Elias’ men to save her son. A vigilante hacker bargains with Simmons to call off the dogs. A corrupt cop has her back. Taylor is safe in her arms again.

She may not be able to trust the NYPD, but she trusts them.

It's enough.

 

*

 

“By all accounts, you were a good cop,” Donnelly says, and Carter bristles but doesn't argue.

She feels strangely calm as Donnelly shoves them into the car and drives away. John is still and expressionless beside her. (She's certain he’s been in worse predicaments.) She still trusts Finch to get them out of this because that's what Finch _does_.

But Donnelly, a good man and a better agent, is bitter and angry. He's a man of integrity and she respects him. He doesn't _understand_.

“No price,” she tells Donnelly softly. “Just helping a friend.”

Donnelly scoffs at her. Carter doesn't get a chance to explain.

 

*

 

Cal Beecher turns out to be a good cop. It quickly gets him killed.

His butchers leave him to bleed on the ground like spoiled meat. He stares back at her with dull, unseeing eyes. Fusco gently pulls her away.

 

*

 

It was freezing in Oyster Bay. Her fingers are numb with cold but Carter is grateful. It means Stills' corpse doesn't reek.

“Obstruction of justice,” says an unpleasant voice at the back of her head that sounds suspiciously like Kara Stanton. “Accessory after the fact.”

“Fusco didn't kill Stills,” Carter mutters out loud with only the dog sleeping on the back seat around to hear.

“How do you know that?” Now the voice sounds like Simmons and Elias rolled into one and Carter wants to be sick. “Because the corrupt cop told you so?”

Fusco might be a liar. But if Carter capable of _this_ , surely he’s still worthy of a second chance.

(She doesn't deserve a chance and neither does Fusco. Her reasons are ultimately more selfish. She can't lose her friend and it's as simple as that.)

 

*

 

She’s cast aside and demoted for a crime she didn’t commit. Her so called colleges treat her like a leaper.

The ones who stand steadfast by her side are a hacker, a killer, a sociopath, a professional blackmailer, a corrupt cop and a mafia don. Carter isn't surprised. It's been like that for a while now.

 

*

 

Elias takes her castle but she takes promptly takes his bishop. The mafia don laughs.

“You’ve beaten me at chess more times than Harold has,” he says with a hint of amusement.

Strategy always came easily to her. She used it bring down terrorists in Iraq. She used to hunt down killers with the homicide task force. She’s using it to undermine HR now.

She was always a little too good at it for comfort.

“I played in high school,” is what Carter says out loud.

Elias takes one of her pawns. She takes one of his.

“You’re far more ruthless in chess than you against HR.”

“Am I?” she asks, taking his Queen.

Elias seems undeterred. He takes her bishop.

“Prison seems practically lenient considering what they did to poor Cal,” he says conversationally and Carter _freezes_.

Elias tops up her wineglass and gives her hand a deceptively gentle pat.

“Say the word, Joss,” he says. “They'll find Simmons at the bottom of the Hudson.”

Carter doesn't respond at first. She takes a sip of wine and Elias’s last bishop.

“Tempting,” she admits finally, “but I always figured that real revenge would be bringing HR down using the broken system they like misusing so much.”

Elias looks genuinely surprised but then smiles.

“You're something else,” he says with a soft laugh.

He’s looking at her like John does _._ Like she’s the Madonna come again. She hates that look.

She finishes her wine, gets to her feet and moves her queen.

“Checkmate.”

 

*

 

“Saint Carter never met a rule she didn't like,” Terney had sneered at her once.

Terney is drowning in his own blood. He won't say anything ever again. He puts a bloody target on Quinn before he dies.

She never gets the chance to ask him why.

 

*

 

Carter gives a performance worthy of Harold Finch and let's Quinn press her hand with tepid fingers. She smiles and swallows back bile. She lies convincingly enough but Quinn isn't fooled. It doesn't matter. She expects as much.

She has a reputation as a bitch with a bone. She intends to live up to it.

 

*

 

She steals a million dollar shipment of drugs, frightens Quinn like a rabbit in a foxhole and starts a gang war. She suddenly understands John’s flair for the dramatic. She's playing with fire but, despite how dire she knows the situation is and how careful she is trying to be, it would be a lie to say that she isn’t enjoying herself. (Wiping Alonzo Quinn’s smug smirk off his face was the highlight.)

HR and the Russians crumble. It's not legal, but it's certainly justice. She can live with that.

 

*

 

Lionel thinks she doesn't trust him.

He pleads with her to let him help. He’s desperate to redeem himself. (Moving Stills was not kindness and Fusco owes her nothing for it.)

He doesn't understand. She trusts him more than anyone. He's a good cop. He's a better friend. She wants him to live.

Carter throws his keys into the gutter and leaves him behind.

 

*

 

She’s in front of Monahan’s house when she finally calls John. He answers immediately.

“Joss,” he says, relieved.

She wants to bring down HR using the law. She wants to see Taylor again. She wants John and Harold to stay far away from this. She wants to make it out alive. She wants John and Harold to keep saving numbers and if anything happened to either of them…

She wants a great many things and she’s not sure she’ll get any of them. Carter swallows and forces herself to speak.

“I might need your help,” she says shakily. “Just in case.”

“Where are you?” he says without hesitation.

“I'm about to ask Judge Monahan for an arrest warrant.”

“Give me three minutes,” says John.

He makes it in two.

 

*

 

“You know, I think that's your problem,” says Quinn, his tone infuriatingly condescending. “You see yourself as a protagonist in some great tragedy. Determined to face the world alone. Even if it gets you killed.”

Carter laughs in his face. He was half right.

 

*

 

A known felon with multiple warrants for his arrest in multiple countries, kisses her in the city morgue. He speaks to her candidly for the first time. Like she’s his friend and confidant, and not something distant and untouchable.

There is definitely a law against this. Perhaps several. Carter finds she doesn’t care.

 

*

 

Finch hacks her department and secures John Warren's release with comical ease. Carter picks him up from holding herself.

John beams when he sees her. She privately decides that the NYPD owes her this. She feels safe for the first time in years and John is...purely happy for the first time she could remember. After the hell she was put through, this isn’t too much to ask. They go to find Finch together.

They’d be okay.


End file.
